KML to DWG (AutoCAD) converter

KML to DWG: Google Earth placemarks and routes as an AutoCAD drawing

KML is the native format of Google Earth and Google My Maps. Site boundaries sketched over satellite imagery, survey points, access roads and walking routes all tend to live there. The moment that markup has to reach a designer, it needs to become a DWG, the file AutoCAD opens natively and the one most engineering offices treat as the working copy.

A typical request comes from a client or surveyor who traced a future plot in Google Earth and now wants the architect to use it as a base for the site plan. Another comes from tour operators and local councils who drew routes in My Maps and need a print-ready layout produced in CAD.

This page takes a .kml file, reads it with GDAL and builds the DWG through the same pipeline that produces the site's own maps: geometry is split into layers, labels go on a layer of their own, and the file is validated before any job is queued.

What carries over and what gets lost

All geometry survives: points, lines and polygons stay where they were, and broken rings are repaired automatically. KML folders and Google Earth styling do not: line colours, widths and placemark icons are replaced by the service's standard map style.

Layers are assigned by geometry type. Polygons without OSM tags go to the area layer (the buildings layer), lines to the roads layer and points to the places layer. A placemark name may come through as a text label on the labels layer, but descriptions and ExtendedData fields are not written into the drawing, because a DWG here is a drawing rather than an attribute database.

KML altitudes are not turned into elevations, so the result is a flat plan. Coordinates are written in Web Mercator metres (EPSG:3857), and the DWG itself does not store a coordinate system. The file is saved as AutoCAD 2018 (AC1032) via ODA File Converter; if that step fails, you get a DXF instead, and the service tells you so.

Step by step

1. Export from Google Earth: right-click the folder or placemark, choose Save Place As and pick KML (KMZ has its own page).
2. Click Choose file on this page and select the .kml; DWG is already set as the output.
3. Start the conversion. The file is checked first, so if GDAL cannot read it you see the error before a job is created.
4. Download the .dwg and open it in AutoCAD 2018 or later (_OPEN), BricsCAD or nanoCAD.
5. If the screen looks empty, run _ZOOM then _E (Extents): the data sits at large metre coordinates, far from the origin.
6. Open the layer manager (_LAYER) and switch off what you do not need; labels and points live on separate layers.
7. To drop the markup under an existing site plan, attach it with _XREF or insert it as a block with _INSERT and align it by reference points, since the two files are almost certainly in different coordinate systems.

Limits

Uploads are capped at 50 MB, and at most 200,000 features are processed; anything beyond that is cut off.

Drawing units are Web Mercator metres, not ground metres. Around Edinburgh (about 56° N) lengths come out roughly 1.79 times longer than in reality, so scale or reproject in a GIS before measuring.

NetworkLink references and GroundOverlay images are not fetched; only the vector geometry inside the file is used.

Example result

Example: a KML of walking tours through Edinburgh's Old Town with three route lines, about twenty landmark placemarks and one polygon for a pedestrian zone. In the DWG the routes land on the roads layer, the placemarks become points on the places layer with their names on the labels layer, and the pedestrian zone becomes a closed polyline on the buildings layer. The colours used in Google Earth need to be reassigned per layer.